Hey, you were doing it before it was cool:
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Ringworm, despite the name, is actually just a fungal infection. Thereâs a number of related species of fungus that grow on the skin of different parts of the body, like âjock itchâ and âathleteâs foot.â I donât know WTF they call it âringworm.â Apparently they used to treat âringwormâ with mercury compounds and X-rays.
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I had/have ring worm on my left hand. It has ever fully gone away. And I am very confused as to why they were giving your antibiotics for a skin fungusâŚ
My mistake and why I think it never fully goes away is that I went to a walk in clinic for it, twice, and they gave me a steroid cream, twice. Guess who loves steroids and who gets super strong while eating steorids: fungus!
@Shuck - its called ring worm because it actually forms a neat ring around the site of infection.
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Thereâs so many crazy cancer stories out there.
I think another very interesting one is the die-off of Tasmanian devils, who are facing the first observed communicable form of cancer (!).
Apparently, itâs because their population has very little genetic diversity, and also their mating ritual involves biting each other on the face. Of course, the cancer is one that first infects their face.
So in a few years, the only Tasmanian devils left alive are going to be the sexual freaks with a non-biting fetish.
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IIRC the one affecting Tasmanian Devils is not the first communicable form of cancer known of. There have been limited instances here and there among humans and other species. But the first more or less easily communicable one is a canine cancer which is transmitted sexually. One of the more far-out factoids about it is that the original cell line is still present, reproducing dog cells from a specimen more than 12,000 years old. Thatâs a perverse sort of âimmortalityâ.
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Well, for my part, the important thing is the punchline about pervy non-biters.
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Now I do?
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Well, another reason why I wonât get any sleep.
On the plus side, anthelmintics are indeed available(the preferred ones are even pretty cheap and effective).
On the minus side(from the paper):
Typical gastrointestinal
H. nana infection is treated with
praziquantel or nitazoxanide, and albendazole is
the drug of choice for tissue-invasion stages of
larval cestodes. However, the efficacy of albendazole
against clonal proliferations of tapeworm
stem cells as opposed to whole organisms is
questionable. Preliminary data from in vitro
studies using cultured cestode stem cells suggest
that albendazole is ineffective (Brehm K:
personal communication). Invasive H. nana cellular
proliferations may therefore present a new
challenge to therapy.
Unlike antibiotics for use against bacteria(which more or less have to attack an important function of any cell of the target organism, since it is unicellular); de-worming drugs can, and do, attack specific specialized functions of multicellular organisms with substantial cellular diffirentation and specialization; organ structures, and so on; and can get the job done even if they only trash a specific important organ or process; but not cells generally.
This poor guy had worm cancer, with masses of undifferentiated abnormal cells that lacked defined tissue specializations or organ structures. They just didnât have the features that functional worms need to survive, and that drugs target.
He died before it could be tested in vivo; but there is substantial room for pessimism about the effectiveness of drugs that clear out ordinary parasites quite effectively.
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(But still, thanks for providing the info.)
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Thatâs better than the one in the bank.
Please?
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I get the âringâ portion of it, itâs the âwormâ portion of it that I donât understand. I know the term goes back about 600 years (at which point it probably referred to a different set of conditions than just the one fungal disease), and Iâm unclear why they thought there were worms involved (or if they even did in the first place, or if perhaps âwormâ had become some sort of generic term simply covering certain kinds of ailments) and why the name persisted centuries after they realized worms werenât involved.
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The ring from a ringworm infection can be raised above normal skin level. If it gets irritated enough itâll develop little hard lumps under the skin so it looks and feels like thereâs sort of a squiggly lump under the skin that makes a ring shape. Why not assume itâs a worm? I mean the people who named it predate the microscope and scientific medicine by quite a few years.
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I am outta here.
ACK ACK ACK ACK ACK ACK ACK
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That makes sense, from a MediĂŚval science point of view - thereâs something with vaguely worm-like qualities, therefore weâll call it a worm.
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And then find the nearest plant that looks sort of worm-like; and get all sympathetic magic on the problem!
(on a more serious note; anyone know if âringwormâ is one of those words that may have made more sense before being pulled out of a Latin context and into English? I know nothing about the etymology of âringwormâ; but I do know that, while âvermisâ is usually translated as âwormâ; Linneus classified a lot of weird stuff(most of it we still consider weird; but now classify almost entirely differently) under the âvermesâ heading. And he was a comparatively recent; and probably-pretty-cutting-edge-by-folk-diagnostics-standards kind of dude. His âvermesâ did not include fungi; but it included a whole lot more than we would today consider âwormsâ; quite possibly including organisms with a rather more plausible alleged relationship to ringworm. If âringwormâ originally implied something closer to this classification(either through Latin or one of its degenerate children); it would still be wrong; but might be a more plausible about it.)
(edit: since our wiki overlords have already done the work; check out who Linnaeus was calling a worm. Punk probably would have gotten his face punched for that if they werenât all mostly goo without much in the way of fists.
Also; by way of that list; there exists the 'Chaosâ genus, inhabited by a variety of amoebae that may possess hundreds of nuclei within their engulfing unicellular mass; just because they contain too much badass to fit in a single nucleus; a trait also demonstrated by reaching sizes of up to 5mm and devouring weak, small, multicellular organisms according to their mere whim and the ceaseless grasping hunger of their pseudopods. This kicks ass. Unfortunately, the organism formerly known as Chaos chaos has been tragically renamed; probably by petty and small-minded microbiologists who arenât metal enough to observe this genus. Thanks âprogressâ.)
Pretty much! I donât know who named the infection or when, but âwormâ in its various forms could mean any number of things.
has itâs probable origin as being from 1375-1425 according to Random House Kernerman Websterâs College Dictionary
I was just thinking about Herzogâs rant about the ugliness and the chaos of the rainforest. And I was just trying to imagine what heâd have to say about this kind of⌠utter horror.
This story keeps repeating on me. It kept creeping into my brainspace all day, when I least expected it.
Itâs⌠Truly disturbing. I donât think Iâve been this disturbed since I was a small child.
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Iâve read that soon genetically modified pigs will be safe for human organ transplantation. I wonder how long itâs going to be when a gene-mod-tapeworm will be the next diet fad.
